Although advertisements on the web pages may degrade your experience, our business certainly depends on them and we can only keep providing you high-quality research based articles as long as we can display ads on our pages.

To view this article, you can disable your ad blocker and refresh this page or simply login.

Is The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM) an excellent stock to buy now? The smart money is taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets rose by 5 lately.

To the average investor, there are tons of metrics market participants can use to monitor the equity markets. Some of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top fund managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a significant amount (see just how much).

Equally as beneficial, positive insider trading activity is another way to break down the marketplace. There are lots of reasons for an insider to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would buy. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this strategy if piggybackers know what to do (learn more here).

Consequently, we’re going to take a look at the recent action regarding The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM).

What have hedge funds been doing with The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 22 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 29% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably.

According to our comprehensive database, Ariel Investments, managed by John W. Rogers, holds the largest position in The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM). Ariel Investments has a $60.7 million position in the stock, comprising 1% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Bernard Horn of Polaris Capital Management, with a $53.4 million position; 3.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism include Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and David Harding’s Winton Capital Management.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, assembled the biggest position in The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM). Arrowstreet Capital had 5.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw also made a $4.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new SJM positions are Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is best served when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the last half-year time period, The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 8 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also take a look at hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM). These stocks are Mead Johnson Nutrition CO (NYSE:MJN), ConAgra Foods, Inc. (NYSE:CAG), Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ:GMCR), and McCormick & Company, Incorporated (NYSE:MKC). This group of stocks are the members of the processed & packaged goods industry and their market caps match SJM’s market cap.